doctorswithoutborders:

Somalia: The Challenges of Bringing Medical Aid

In Mogadishu, about half of the more than one million inhabitants are displaced persons. The camps are overcrowded. Amidst insecurity and a growing health crisis, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is scaling up its medical response.

Sharonann Lynch, HIV/AIDS policy adviser for MSF’s Access Campaign, in the press release calling on G20 leaders to bail out global health with a financial transaction tax. (via doctorswithoutborders)

doctorswithoutborders:

Somali refugees stand outside a reception center in Dagahaley camp, Dadaab, Kenya. Since the kidnapping of two MSF employees on Oct. 13, MSF has continued to treat severely malnourished children and others in the Dagahaley camp hospital. Teams plan to reopen four health posts inside the camp and to restart other medical activities in the coming days. Read more

Photo: Kenya 2011 © Michael Goldfarb/MSF

doctorswithoutborders:

Carmen is 32 years old. She lives in Tete, a town on the Zambezi river in northern Mozambique, with her husband, Victorino, and two children.

She found out she was HIV-positive in 2007 and started on antiretroviral treatment in 2009. Today she is alive and healthy, looking after her family and going to evening school to improve her qualifications.

“I cried when I came back from the hospital on the day I found out I was HIV positive, and I had no idea what to do,” she said. “It was my sister who encouraged me to follow what the doctor said. And I am glad I did because without the medication, I expect I would be dead by now.”

Today, more than six million people living with HIV are alive because they are receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment. But nearly nine million more are still waiting to get these medicines and will die without them in the next several years. Getting more people on treatment not only saves more lives, it also dramatically reduces the risk of new infections, offering a way forward to halting the spread of the AIDS pandemic.

With funding to expand treatment many more people like Carmen could have real futures to plan for with their families and in their communities. And we could see light at the end of this HIV/AIDS tunnel.

“5 Lives” tells the stories of people who MSF works with every day, people whose lives often hinge on whether or not they can gain access to a simple medical intervention. These are situations that could be avoided with proper and sustainable funding and investment in public health. That’s why MSF supports calls to permanently allocate a small portion of a new financial transaction tax (FTT), which has been proposed by some governments, to support global health needs. A regular stream of funding would help provide some of the resources needed to address unchecked health crises around the world.

Photo: © Brendan Bannon